On the last lap of the weekend movie marathon, Tom and I saw “The Congress” and “Predestination,” two films each based on an SF story.

“The Congress” was recommended to us by our video rental staffer, who let me have this movie for free since it was my birthday. Plus, she approved of our other selections. She told us this is based on a Stanislaw Lem story. I’m not familiar with the story, which has little or nothing to do with politics. A Facebook Friend of mine kindly posted a Wikipedia link to the story, which you can find by visiting the Timeline on my Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/lisa.mason.7393264.

This turned out to be a very strange SFnal film, a large segment of which is animated. Essentially, an actress is offered a lucrative deal to turn her image and gestures into a digital character that the movie producer obtains the perpetual rights to use in any kind of film, in any way. The actress doesn’t approve, but she’s got a young son with a degenerative disease, so she agrees for the money. Some plot twists didn’t make sense, and I recall that the concept of media actors being replaced by digital constructs has been explored in written fiction some years ago (I think Connie Willis wrote a short novel based on this premise). But overall the film is interesting and different and the animation is wonderful.

And finally, “Predestination” is an adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s 1959 classic story “All You Zombies—“, one of my favorite SF stories—hilarious, profound, and mind-blowing all at the same time. I’m not going to give away the plot more than that. The filmmakers did a fabulous job of tackling the story and updating and amplifying it. Highly recommended.